Airborne Electronic Attack to Become Joint and Centralized

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Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Airborne Electronic Attack to Become Joint and Centralized

Posted by Sean Meade at 5/9/2010 2:50 PM CDT

David A. Fulghum writes:

A long-running Pentagon quandary -- over who conducts airborne electronic warfare, how offensive, electronic-attack capabilities should be strengthened and when or what permission is needed to launch tactical cyber attacks – may now be on the road to resolution.

The latest signal that a true transformation is building momentum is U.S. Air Force activation of the 513th Electronic Warfare (EW) Squadron at Eglin AFB, Fla. to meet needs of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The Air Combat Command unit will be staffed half by USAF personnel and half by Navy and Marine Corps specialists. Command will rotate among the services. Navy officials at Washington’s Navy League Convention say the move is more than just laying the EW ground work for the Joint Strike Fighter. It is expected to become the focus of a single operation to create the software, algorithms and waveforms needed to field a coordinated, cross-service set of electronic tools that can combat enemy radars, missiles and networks through information manipulation, disruption of command and control, anti-electronic attacks and jamming.

Creation of the squadron, part of the 53rd Wing at Eglin, comes just as the Air Force has begun equipping its F-15Cs with new, long-range active, electronically-scanned array radars (AESA). The advanced AESAs operate at 2-3 times the range of conventional radar and also serve as a powerful weapon for airborne electronic attack (AEA) when coupled with a techniques generator that produces unique waveforms and algorithms. The Navy’s Next Generation Jammer is also expected to play a major role in joint services’ AEA planning and various versions will be carried by the F-35.

AESA radars with similar capabilities also equip the F-22 Raptor, EA-18G Growler and the F/A-18E/Fs Super Hornets. The JSF is expected to serve, in the long term, as a stealthier version of the Growler. All of those aircraft will need similar software, architecture and a steady diet of upgrades to meet new threats. It also would ensure that they can fly in mixed service and mixed platform attacks and exchange data fast enough to be tactically relevant.

The 513th’s first commander is Air Force Lt. Col. Tim Welde. Fully staffed, the unit will have about 130 personnel in a 50-50 service mix.

“The unit also will test F-35 EW capability in the new U.S. Reprogramming Lab, currently under construction with a projected completion date this summer, followed by hardware delivery in spring 2011,” says Welde, "Our engineers are currently developing threat models and 5th generation mission data; our technicians are undergoing maintenance training as well as prepping the lab."

The squadron is expected to draw heavily on EW technology, tactics, threat analyses and attack techniques honed by the Navy in the last two decades.

“I don’t know that [the centralization of EW] has been formalized,” says Navy Capt. Mark Darrah, program manager for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler. “But I know those [AESA-equipped fighter] units are standing up with very specific training requirements. We’ve had AESA for some time and we know how it works. The technology is the same. It makes good sense that we do that [in a joint environment].”

Meanwhile, the Navy is conducting an aggressive upgrade program to increase the AEA capabilities of its new EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft that would eventually transfer to the F-35. Until then, it also will dedicate 26 Growlers to squadrons that support the USAF’s Air Expeditionary Forces.

The new Growler EA and Super Hornet strike platforms are being designed to operate with “every other platform,” Darrah says. In particular, “we are working closely with the Joint Strike Fighter program to develop complementary combinations” of stealthy and non-stealthy aircraft for combat.

The Air Force is following a similar path in pairing its non-stealthy, AESA-equipped F-15Cs for the non-penetrating, “stand-in” jamming role in support of stealthy F-22 so that the latter can remain electronically silent to avoid detection.

Test of the Growler’s APG-79 AESA radar has validated that it can detect large targets at least at twice the distance of a mechanically-scanned radar and three times the range for small targets, Darrah says.

A partial list of new capabilities includes full-spectrum EA, network centric operations, interference cancellation and DRFM jamming, Darrah says. The last refers to a standard EW tactic that captures an incoming radar signal, alters it to change the intended target’s speed, range, altitude, signatures, and send it back to the emitter (probably a radar) with the false information. Interference correlation is the Growler’s unique capability that allows it to jam and communicate at the same time.

Sophisticated data and communications connectivity on the Growler and Super Hornet allows them to pass long-range AESA identification and targeting data to aircraft that do not have the advanced radar, Darrah says.

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Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Surprises from the Navy's Next Generation Jammer Competition

Posted by David A. Fulghum at 5/13/2010 11:46 AM CDT

Clues about secret designs for the Navy’s Next Generation Jammer competition are emerging.

Technology involved in the various concepts includes broad-band, electronically-scanned arrays, advanced radars, digitized exciters and techniques generators to produce exotic waveforms and algorithms for electronic warfare. Perhaps most importantly, the concepts and technology maturity being built today are stepping stones to wider apertures, cooler amplifiers and faster processing, say aerospace industry officials involved in the competition. Initial operating capability for NGJ in the EA-18G Growler fleet is 2018. The F-35 is to add its advanced electronic attack capability in a block 5 aircraft sometime after 2020.

“The technology suite that goes into Next Generation Jammer [NGJ] is relevant to other solutions,” agrees Rick Martin, Boeing’s director for electronic warfare at Phantom Works.

“[NGJ could] be a major improvement because for the first time we [might] bring broadband ESA [electronically scanned arrays] into the [EA-18G Growler] platform,” says Eduardo Palacio, vice president of programs for ITT’s electronic system division.

Boeing and ITT officials won’t talk about the key antenna technology involved in their NGJ pod design, but others with insight into the program say that it involves a sophisticated arrangement of six, active electronically scanned arrays [AESA]. The new, elongated-hexagon antenna is designed to create a continuous, scalloped and overlapping, 360 degree coverage area with less range and accuracy degradation at array join points.

The antenna design overcomes the intrinsic weakness of AESA apertures which is its field of regard of less than 160 degrees for each straight line of transmitter/receiver apertures. So far combinations of two (Australian Wedgetail), three (Chinese AWACS design) and four (Israeli and Singapore air forces AEWC aircraft) planar arrays have been built, but where the straight arrays end or meet, there is a drop off in radar coverage.

The Boeing/ITT NGJ package will be linked, but separate from the Growler’s AESA radar. Other designs in the competition include the AESA as part of the NGJ design. Critics contend that the AESA has a far different duty cycle (pulses instead of continuous power) than a jammer/electronic attack system and a limited field of regard.

“At some point, the radar will run into its limitations,” Palacio says. That could be the amount of power required for a target or the number of targets that need to be handled. “The mission of NGJ will be to deal with a large number of threats [by using] a large amount of RF energy and complete focus on the [EA] mission,” he says.

“The Growler has a very sophisticated AESA radar, but how many task are you going to place on that radar and [its limited] field of regard,” Martin says. “The radar is looking forward and ideally you would like the pilot to use it to sterilize the environment and protect the aircraft with air-to-air targeting. The aircrew in the back would have a full-360 degree jamming capability with multiple, simultaneous beams engaging surface and air-to-air targets [such as missiles or aircraft].”

ITT and Boeing are teamed for the NGJ contest. Other competitors include Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems. A prototype demonstration phase starts in Jan. 2011.

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US appoints first cyber warfare general

Pentagon creates specialist online unit to counter cyber attack amid growing fears of militarisation of the internet

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor The Observer,

Sunday 23 May 2010


The Pentagon is channelling a growing volume of troops and resources into countering cyber warfare. Photograph: Mike Nelson/AFP/Getty Images

The US military has appointed its first senior general to direct cyber warfare – despite fears that the move marks another stage in the militarisation of cyberspace.

The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to conduct virtual combat across the world's computer networks. He was appointed on Friday afternoon in a low-key ceremony at Fort Meade, in Maryland.

The creation of America's most senior cyber warrior comes just days after the US air force disclosed that some 30,000 of its troops had been re-assigned from technical support "to the frontlines of cyber warfare".

The creation of Cyber Command is in response to increasing anxiety over the vulnerability of the US's military and other networks to a cyber attack.

James Miller, the deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, has hinted that the US might consider a conventional military response to certain kinds of online attack.

Although Alexander pledged during his confirmation hearings before the Senate committee on armed services last month that Cyber Command would not contribute to the militarisation of cyberspace, the committee's chairman, Senator Carl Levin expressed concern that both Pentagon doctrine, and the legal framework for online operations, had failed to keep pace with rapid advances in cyber warfare.

In particular Levin voiced concern that US cyber operations to combat online threats to the US, routed through neutral third countries, "could have broad and damaging consequences" to wider American interests.

Plans for Cyber Command were originally conceived under President George W Bush. Since taking office Barack Obama has embraced the theme of cyber security, describing it last year as "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges [the US faces] as a nation".

During his confirmation hearing, Alexander said that the Pentagon's networks were being targeted by "hundreds of thousands of probes every day" adding that he had "been alarmed by the increase, especially in this year".

Cyber warfare has increased rapidly in scale and sophistication with China accused of being at the forefront of prominent recent attacks, including the targeting of Google and 20 other companies last year as well as "Titan Rain" in 2003 – a series of coordinated attacks on US networks. Russian and North Korean hackers have also been accused of large-scale attacks.

Moscow was accused of being behind a massive cyber assault on Estonia in 2007 – the second largest cyber warfare operation ever conducted.

While Alexander has tried to play down the offensive aspects of his command, the Pentagon has been more explicit, stating on Friday that Cyber Command will "direct the operations and defence of specified Department of Defense information networks [involving some 90,000 military personnel] and prepare to, when directed, conduct full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, [to] ensure US allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."

The complex issues facing Cyber Command were thrown into relief earlier this year when the Washington Post revealed details of a so-called "dot-mil" operation by Fort Meade's cyber warfare unit, backed by Alexander, to shut down a "honeytrap website" set up by the Saudis and the CIA to target Islamist extremists planning attacks in Saudi Arabia.

The Pentagon became convinced that the forum was being used to co-ordinate the entry of jihadi fighters into Iraq.

Despite the strong objections of the CIA, the site was attacked by the Fort Meade cyber warfare unit. As a result, some 300 other servers in the Saudi kingdom, Germany and Texas also were inadvertently shut down.

Of equally concern to those who had opposed the operation, it was conducted without informing key members of the Saudi royal family, who were reported to be "furious" that a counter-terrorism tool had been shut down.

The issue of cyber warfare – and how to combat it – has become an increasingly fraught one.

The need to have electronic warfare capabilities, say those who support them, has been proven repeatedly by the apparent success of hostile attacks on government networks, including last year's massive denial of service assault on networks in both the US and Korea.

Last year, hackers also accessed large amounts of sensitive data concerning the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter programme.

The difficulties facing the new command were underlined in March by former CIA director Michael V Hayden, who said that the Saudi operation had demonstrated that cyber warfare techniques were evolving so rapidly that they were now outpacing the government's ability to develop coherent policies to guide its use.

"Cyber was moving so fast that we were always in danger of building up precedent before we built up policy," Hayden said.

[buglerbilly]

Jammer Competition Spurs New Technology

May 27, 2010



By David A. Fulghum, Bill Sweetman
Washington, Washington

The growing overlap of elec*tronic warfare and cyber-invasion is generating excitement around the U.S. Navy’s competition for the Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ) and the U.S. Air Force’s reentry into the world of airborne electronic attack.

A key enabling technology is a six-sided active, electronically scanned array (AESA) that more than doubles the field of view of today’s electronically scanned antennas on advanced aircraft such as the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.

Other technologies include broadband AESA, advanced radars, digitized exciters and techniques generators that produce exotic waveforms and algorithms for electronic and cyber*warfare. Perhaps more importantly, today’s concepts and technology are stepping-stones to wider apertures, cooler amplifiers and faster processing, say aerospace industry officials involved in the competition. Initial operating capability for the NGJ in the Boeing EA‑18G Growler fleet is 2018. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is to add an advanced electronic attack capability in a Block 5 aircraft sometime after 2020.

“The technology suite that goes into the Next-Generation Jammer [for the Growler] is relevant to other solutions,” agrees Rick Martin, Boeing’s director for electronic warfare at the company’s Phantom Works organization.

The NGJ might be a “major improvement” because for the first time broadband electronically scanned arrays (ESAs) could be added to the Growler platform, says Eduardo Palacio, vice president of programs for ITT Electronic Systems.

Boeing and ITT officials will not talk about the key antenna technology in their NGJ pod design. But others with insight into the program say that it involves a sophisticated arrangement of six planar AESAs in an elongated, hexagon shape to create a continuous, scalloped and overlapping, 360-deg. coverage area with less range and accuracy degradation at array join points.

The antenna arrangement is designed to overcome the intrinsic weakness of ESAs, which is its effective field of regard of about 120 deg. for each planar array of transmitter/receiver modules. So far, various teams have addressed the problem differently. Northrop Grumman’s radar for the Boeing 737-based Wedgetail has two side-looking antennas and fore and aft gap-fillers based on unusual “endfire” arrays. The Israel Aerospace Industries-modified Russian A-50 delivered to India has three arrays in a ro*todome. The Gulfstream-based IAI-Elta airborne early warning aircraft delivered to Israel and Singapore has two side and two fore-and-aft arrays cooperating in different bands. However, none provides uniform coverage in all directions.

The Boeing/ITT NGJ package will be linked, but separate from the Growler’s advanced AESA radar. Some proposals in the competition include the AESA radar as part of the NGJ design. Critics contend that a radar’s duty cycle is very different (pulses instead of continuous power) from that of a jammer/electronic attack system.

“At some point, the radar will run into its limitations,” Palacio says. That could be the amount of power required for a target or targets that need to be handled. “The mission of NGJ will be to deal with a large number of threats [by using] a large amount of [radio-frequency] energy and focus on the [EA] mission,” he says.

“The Growler has a very sophisticated AESA radar, but how many tasks are you going to place on that radar and [its limited] field of regard?” Martin says. “The radar is looking forward, and ideally you would like the pilot to use it to sterilize the environment and protect the aircraft with air-to-air targeting. The aircrew in the back would have a full 360-deg. jamming capability with multiple, simultaneous beams engaging surface and air-to-air targets [such as missiles or aircraft].”

The AESA elements cover a wider frequency band than the horn antennas in the current ALQ-99 jamming pods. ITT is not commenting on whether this would make it possible to change today’s architecture, in which each pod can be loaded with a different combination of traveling-wave-tube and antenna modules to cover different frequencies. “It’s a trade space,” says Palacio. “There are lots of things that would allow me to maintain the current operational capability.”

ITT and Boeing expect to be selected for the forthcoming maturation phase of the program, along with the three other contending teams led by Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and BAE Systems. That phase is likely to start this summer and continue for 18-21 months, with contractor work proceeding in parallel with the Navy’s definition of a specification.

The NGJ package (in some form) is expected to be carried by the F-35 as the successor to the Growler, although that will not happen until after 2020, and more likely closer to 2040, as the EA-18G aircraft start using up their airframe lives. Moreover, it was recently revealed that because of a reduction in fighter aircraft, stealthy platforms such as the F-22 and F-35 will be provided jamming and electronic attack support by nonstealthy F-15C (modified with AESA radars and EA systems) and semi-stealthy *Growlers for decades. The new force-structure model has the potential to extend Growler production and use for years, say industry analysts.

The ITT-Boeing team is convinced that the NGJ project should focus first on developing a replacement jamming pod system for the Growler.

“We need to take it one level of uncertainty at a time,” says Palacio.

Martin points out that the EA-18G took six years and $1.2 billion to develop, starting with a stable Super Hornet Block 2 configuration. “To develop a platform, a complete electronic attack suite [for F-35] in eight years violates mathematics,” he says.

Packaging the NGJ into various pod configurations could expand its applications for advanced aircraft.

“A podded solution gives the advantages of flexibility and field of view,” Martin says. “Advanced programs may want to take advantage of that. The challenge with any system is working out the power, cooling and volume, as well as survivability integration challenges that come with an internal solution.”

Options for external packaging include stealthy and nonstealthy pods or a smaller conformal design that can be added without changing the platform signature, Martin says.

“If the solution becomes internal, then we have to consider [more expensive] conformal apertures and the right radome—all the things associated with a JSF-like structure,” Palacio says.

There is another argument that the NGJ package installed on an F-35 will not be as powerful an electronic attack platform as the Growler without adding upgrades that would be too expensive and time-consuming to field. Whereas, on the Growler, the NGJ pod will be part of an integrated EA system that includes an advanced digital receiver, data fusion on the platform, multi-source integration and optimized crew/vehicle interfaces, along with jammer and weapons management.

“The digital receivers are tailored to identify and geo-locate where the threat emitters are,” Martin says. “There are other data sources coming into the platform that allow you to fuse all the information into an operational picture for electronic attack. All of that is in play before you ever hit a button to jam something.

“In 2040, the [EA-18G] will still be out there, but we’ll know by then what it takes to transition to an all-up, stealthy EA weapons system for an aircraft,” he says. “It’s going to be supporting a broad range of missions, some we have even conceived of yet. Cyber is out there.”

Credit: US Navy

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Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

NGJ -- More than a Jammer

Posted by David A. Fulghum at 6/16/2010 9:15 AM CDT

Networked armies are a reality among both conventional and insurgent forces, and as a result every antenna on the battlefield has become a target for silent, invasive attack and spying.

An airborne system that is expected to take advantage of that vulnerability is the U.S. Navy’s Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) program.

NGJ is being designed as a marriage of active electronically scanned array (AESA) antennas – combined in experimental arrays – that are controlled by easily updated and replaceable packages of software. The Navy has asked industry to assemble its best ideas for the NGJ and offer them as a catalog of ideas achievable in the near term.

Roughly, the program will be developed in two parts. The first task is designing a two-pod system for the Navy’s EA-18G Growler. The second part of the problem will be refining NGJ for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter so that the stealth signature will not be altered.

The Navy would like to pick the best products from each competing team’s offering and mold them into a single system. Competitors object to revealing their intellectual properties to other companies. Teams include ITT/Boeing (AW&ST, May 24, p.57), Northrop Grumman (March 29, p.62), BAE Systems (Nov. 9, 2009, p.74) and Raytheon.

Basically, electronic surveillance identifies the exact location of antennas linked with the network to be attacked. A datastream of specialized waveforms and algorithms is fired from a specialized aircraft into the antenna of interest. Once inside, the digital package could, for example, transmit back what the enemy sensors see, take over control of sensors as systems administrator, mine computer memories for data and tap into remote appendages of the network such as mobile radars and missile launchers.

In fact, the EA/EW target set is more and more becoming the distributed pieces of any network that requires wireless communications or the extremities of the network such as sensors. So instead of attacking networks directly, tacticians go to those outlying elements and work their way back.

“Given that you have a limited number of stealthy aircraft, you’ve got to [generate support for] those that are not stealthy,” says Jim Bailey, Raytheon’s NGJ capture director. “Electronic attack (EA) and electronic warfare (EW) techniques are one way to help those aircraft. It is a way to use non-stealthy aircraft to complement stealth aircraft in a strike package.

“These new tools [associated with NGJ] should allow non-stealthy aircraft to penetrate farther into enemy air defense,” he says. “Threats include longer-range [air defense] missiles and improved radars. [So for a new jammer,] we want more power, better polarization control, open modular architecture, a cleaner spectrum, complete spectrum coverage, 360 degree field of regard and advanced modulation [to provide all those specialized waveforms that unlock enemy electronics].”

The goal of NGJ is to shrink the lethal range of advanced air defenses. The stealthy F-35 will likely fly into those threat rings, the non-stealthy Growler will stay outside.

“The Growlers, carrying NGJ, will apply jamming to shrink the threats’ observable, controllable, attackable space to allow our strike packages to execute their mission,” Bailey says. “[Air Defense] threats have gotten better over the years, so maintaining that modified escort arena is the result of EA/EW improvements. Any kind of jamming has to be well thought out to avoid making yourself vulnerable.”

Advanced SAM designs -- like the SA-20 (S-300)that Russia has considered selling to Iran and even newer anti-aircraft systems extending through the S-600 series -- have longer-range missiles, improved radars with electronic scanning, digital control, pulse compression, coherency, advanced electronic protection techniques and irregular tactics, U.S. analysts say.

For now, the Holy Grail for the Navy’s Next Generation Jammer is an active electronically scanned array that can scan 360 degrees and dish out electronic attack and conduct network intrusion while itself remaining impervious to any foe’s cyber and electronic weaponry.

To this point, the active electronically scanned array (AESA) has been associated with radars – which use pulses of energy -- and flat array antennas that each only produce a useable 120 degree field of view. And if the radar happens to be connected to a network, it may be vulnerable to interception, exploitation and manipulation by hackers of many types. Moreover, much of the ability to generate electronic trickery that AESA could bring to the battlefield will be the product of software upgrades that are still unfunded by Congress.

There are other emerging technical problems that NGJ will confront.

“You used to just transmit pulses to confuse the enemy,” Bailey says. “Now you have to pay attention to coherency so you can feed them something that looks like a real target.”

Another defense is the use of advanced electronic detection techniques.

“They are trying to figure out all the things we do to confuse and mislead them,” says Charles Orbell, the company’s senior manager for EW business development.

“They then design in features that enable their radar to operate in an EW environment. That’s why we need something new.”

“There are multiple threats we are trying to address,” Bailey says. “To counter advanced integrated air defenses, NGJ will have to generate multiple simultaneous beams and multiple techniques per beam. As a rule, we would like to use a pencil beam, but when you are at low frequency, physics rule and you get a fat beam.

“In addition, there will be a range of frequencies we’re trying to cover in a layered approach,” he says. “First we take care of the search radars in the lower frequencies. High frequency emitters [associated with missile radars] usually mean you against many of them. You try to find the worst threats and design the most optimal path through or around them. Then you deal with pop-ups and surprises as best you can.”

Because of the geographically diverse proliferation of advanced SAMs, part of the NGJ challenge is to address all the threats with fewer transmitters and aircraft than is required today.

The initial plan is to build a pod the size of a fuel tank for an EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft. In fact, the plan is for two pods, but company officials think that an interchangeable pod that can transmit out of one side at a time rather than specialized left and right pods may be a cheaper, more functional design.

The problem with fitting pod mounted NGJs to the Growler is that each is outboard of a large 480-gal. fuel tank and the low-band transmitter on the center-line station. Neither can be radiated with high-power radio frequency jamming signals from the NGJ pods. So, the solution so far appears to be pods that function to one side during each mission.

Each pod will likely carry two, 90-degree field-of-regard AESA arrays – one at the front and another at the back – each canted at a 45 degree angle from the centerline. The two then provide 180 degree coverage to each side. Other competitors are looking at a hexagon shaped AESA array with three flat arrays looking to each side.

A more complicated idea is how to change the pulsed energy output of an AESA radar, which requires less energy and cooling, to a continuous energy output needed to create predictable and repeatable effects on enemy electronics. The latter, of course, requires a lot more energy and cooling, which could be one of the tougher aspects of the program.

“Adapting AESA concepts from pulsed radar to CW operation is not so hard,” Bailey says. “The focus is packaging sufficient aperture [strings of small transmitter/receiver modules] to cover the required bandwidth at element power levels well above traditional radars. The challenges are generating enough power in the pod to feed the transmitter and cooling the system. This NGJ design will stress thermal constraints.”

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U.S. Navy Mulls NGJ Architecture Choice

Oct 13, 2010

By Robert Wall, David A. Fulghum, Graham Warwick
London, Washington, Washington



The U.S. Navy is poised to make difficult decisions regarding its primary airborne electronic attack initiative, with a goal of finding the right balance between performance and acceptable program risk.

The service is committed to making the Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ) the backbone of its future electronic attack capabilities as it prepares to replace ALQ‑99 pods used today on the EA-6B Prowler and EA-18G Growler.The focus is now shifting to fully defining what the new system should look like. The decision has big implications for industry, with Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Boeing and Raytheon already working on the early development activities. Other bidders also could participate.

Part of the operational envelope that NGJ will open for naval aviation involves sophisticated airborne electronic attacks (AEA), nonkinetic standoff weapons and the penetration of integrated command-and-control networks. The U.S. Air Force demonstrated the capability by aiming a data beam packed with algorithms into the antennas of an air defense network operating on the Nellis Test Ranges in Nevada. Since that time, the task has been to reduce AEA packages to a size that can be carried by tactical aircraft.

What the NGJ architecture should look like is one key question the Navy must answer. With the low-band jammer to be packaged into a center-line carrier pod, the current conundrum is to decide whether jamming of other radar bands should be housed in only two other pods—one under each wing—or whether a four-pod setup would make more sense. Although the three-pod arrangement (including the centerline low-band jammer) would leave space for other payloads, the Navy is worried about program risk. As Capt. John Green, the Navy’s AEA program manager, points out: “We believe the three-pod solution is much riskier.”

An architecture decision has to be made in the next 6-8 months to properly spell out the bidders’ requirements for the next round of technology development. The Navy plans to award two development contracts that will run two years. That phase is expected to include a flight evaluation to help choose the winning provider for the NGJ. Nominally, the Navy hopes to field the jamming system around 2018.

The Navy has drafted exacting requirements for the jammer, including a far higher effective radiated power, polarization control and a cleaner spectral output to avoid jamming friendly systems. The service also wants enhanced modularity so the system can be upgraded. A few years after it is first fielded, the system will already look very different, Green told an IQPC airborne electronic warfare conference in London.

Every antenna on the battlefield will be a target, particularly those associated with enemy air defenses, say industry officials with insight into cross-service AEA programs. However, other Navy and industry specialists note that new radar systems—based on active, electronically scanned array (AESA) technology—have triple the detection ranges of mechanically scanned radars and can locate stealthy aircraft and missiles. U.S. and Israeli planners indicate they will continue to use nonstealthy aircraft but equipped with long-range jamming tools to thwart enemy air defenses. Unmanned aircraft would be used to penetrate closer to such threat systems.

“NGJ is a highly complex development program with lots of moving parts,” says Dennis Hayden, director of business development for Northrop Grumman’s information operations and electronic attack division. “The Navy is not only keeping industry working intensely on the multiple-configuration possibilities for the EA-18G, but they also have us addressing the [Marine Corps’] F-35 requirements that will add an updated receiver system and mission computer as well as single-seat operations to the mix—all in a similar timeframe.”

NGJ is expected to create a marriage of various AESA antenna designs (to increase coverage to 360 deg. around an aircraft) that are controlled by easily updated and replaceable software packages. The Navy has asked industry to assemble its best ideas for the NGJ and offer them as a catalog of concepts that are achievable in the near term. Power and cooling, not electronic or network attack capabilities, have been identified and are the NGJ’s biggest challenges.

“The Navy has asked us to look at anything that will maximize the performance of NGJ and minimize program risk,” Hayden says. “That’s why we’re spending a lot of time and [company] money on modeling and simulation.”

The Office of Naval Research also is spending about $28 million on the Next-Generation AEA program to mature future technologies for the NGJ. Although Green would not specify in what areas the work is underway, he notes that funding has already been adjusted—in some cases, with more money going to promising technologies and withdrawn from less promising areas. These activities will provide the basis of technology insertion once the NGJ is fielded.

A key feature of the NGJ is slated to be its power generation; the Navy wants to eliminate the ram air turbine (RAT) used for the ALQ-99 to improve the field of view, so the new pod is to feature an internal, ducted RAT.

Operationally, the combination of *Growler and NGJ-standoff jamming capabilities is expected to revitalize the value of stealth aircraft in penetrating the new AESA-improved, ground-based, air defense systems. Because of the geographic proliferation of advanced surface-to-air missile systems, part of the NGJ challenge is to address all the threats with fewer transmitters and aircraft than are required today.

Several issues remain to be resolved, however, including the exact frequency allocation between the different jamming devices. The Navy may also have pods with several AESAs to be able to properly jam multiple radar or communications sites. One of the NGJ’s features is the planned ability to defeat bistatic and multistatic radars.

To minimize cost, the service is likely to field the NGJ in increments. But the exact plan has yet to be defined. The low-band jammer version will probably come later, since its development is relatively new. That also means, though, that the Navy could still be facing upgrade and sustainment bills for the ALQ-99 even as development and production funding for the NGJ would be ramping up.

Apart from the Navy, the Marines have set their sights on the NGJ. “We are heavily reliant on the success of the Next-Generation Jammer” for use on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and for advanced electronic warfare payloads for unmanned aircraft, says Lt. Col. Shawn Cunningham, aviation officer for the Marine Air Ground Task Force.

The Marines plan to equip their Group 4 fixed-wing unmanned aircraft—intended to replace the Shadow 200—with intelligence collection and standoff jamming capabilities. The system, due to be fielded around 2016-18, would initially carry the ALQ-99 pod and, later, an NGJ version. Operationally, an unmanned aircraft with NGJ would likely be assigned different frequency bands to jam than an F-35.

For the unmanned systems applications, military officials are looking for software reprogrammability, allowing them to modify jamming frequencies in flight. The U.S. Army is trying to validate some of that capability with its communications electronic attack with surveillance and reconnaissance (Ceasar) development effort aimed for use on Shadow 200s and eventually on the Sky Warrior unmanned aerial system.

Photo credit: DOD

Photo: US Navy

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U.S. Navy Identifies Network Invasion Tool

Jan 7, 2011

By David A. Fulghum



A top U.S. Navy official acknowledges that the service’s Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) — designed for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler and F-35 — will feature a network invasion capability.

Such a capability was demonstrated a few years ago by the U.S. Air Force, which created a focused datastream with its EC-130 Compass Call aircraft that could be filled with invasive algorithms and fired into the antenna of an integrated air defense system and its wirelessly connected missile launching vehicles. The effects on the enemy network were monitored by an RC-135 Rivet Joint. This network invasion effort was known as “Suter.”

Now the Navy is putting the capability on fighter-size tactical aircraft through NGJ.

“I think [Suter] is a good description of NGJ [capability],” says Vice Adm. David Dorsett, deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance and director of naval intelligence. “Next Generation Jammer is a focus for that type of capability.”

NGJ is part of a Navy effort from 2010 to 2020 to refocus research and development on non-kinetic capabilities like information operations, network invasion and electronic attack. “We have been out of balance” because of the necessary focus on kinetic weapons needed to fight limited wars in the 2000-2010 period, Dorsett says.

Photo: US Navy

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More on this from Fulghum..........

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Navy Confirms That New Jammer Will Be Cyber-Invasion Device

Posted by David A. Fulghum at 1/7/2011 8:30 AM CST

The EA-18G Growler and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will both carry an airborne network invasion weapon, says U.S. Navy’s top intelligence official.

A few years ago, the U.S. Air Force first demonstrated the ability to create a focused datastream with its EC-130 Compass Call aircraft that could be filled with invasive algorithms and fired into the antenna of an integrated air defense system and its wirelessly-connected missile launching vehicles. The capability was exercised in a progressive series of “Suter programs”. The effects on the enemy network were monitored by an RC-135 Rivet Joint. Now the Navy will install the capability on fighter-size tactical aircraft.

“I think [Suter] is a good description of NGJ [capability],” says Vice Adm. David J. Dorsett, deputy Chif of Naval Operations for information dominance and director of naval intelligence (N2/N6).

“Yes, correct,” he says, the Navy is planning to put the capability on tactical aircraft. “Next Generation Jammer is a focus for that type of capability.”

NGJ is part of a Navy effort from 2010 to 2020 to refocus research and development on non-kinetic capabilities like information operations, network invasion and electronic attack. “We have been out of balance” because of the necessary focus on kinetic (explosive and penetrating) weapons needed to fight limited wars in the 2000-2010 period, Dorsett says.

And a later comment..........


David A. Fulghum wrote:

We know that the Navy and the Australians are lining up for Next Generation Jammer on the Growler. The question remains -- what is the U.S. Air Force going to do for an airborne network invasion capability for its tactical fighters. Are they going to develop a separate and distinct system or do they eventually buy into NGJ. Since the F-15Cs, F-15E and JSF -- in addition to yet undesignated unmanned aircraft -- will have AESA radars to build on, we know the capability is there. But so far, there's been no obvious movement by the USAF even though it first demonstrated the Suter capability.

1/7/2011 1:00 PM CST